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“We’re not thinking machines that feel,
we’re feeling machines that think.”
- Antonio Damasio
Neuroscientist at the University of Southern California,
Head of the Brain and Creativity Institute
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Marke&ng is many things.
It is discovering what uniquely emo&onal space an an&histamine can occupy in
someone’s heart. It is an&cipa&ng which micro-trend currently popular among
tacoterians is going to disrupt the condiment market in 2020. It’s even
understanding how the &me and distance of someone's daily commute relates
to the likelihood of them switching deodorant brands.
But more than anything, marke&ng is about influencing people’s behaviour.
Ideally, to the point that they change their behaviour.
So understanding the rela&onship between the two, marke&ng and behaviour,
is crucial, don’t you think? At The Sound, we’ve spent thousands of hours
watching, listening, and talking to people to gain insight into the nature of this
rela&onship. And what we’ve learned from our endless trips down this rabbit
hole is that geIng people to change their behaviour is difficult.
It’s difficult because what a marketer cares about is not what a normal person
cares about. Normal people don’t think about your brand that much. Or at all.
Or ever. Save for that split second before they make a purchase. Sorry.
Don’t do this.
Marketing is the art of change
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Another key reason as to why it is so difficult to change people’s behaviour is
because people do not always know why they do what they do. But when asked,
they’re happy to tell us anyway. Even if what they say contradicts what they do,
which happens rou&nely.
Taking what people say too literally has resulted in some truly awful common sense
marke&ng; the kind that makes ra&onal and persuasive sense – but doesn’t actually
influence behaviour at all.
Have you been lied to by ‘purchase intent’ data? Perhaps you had a persuasive ad
that sailed through pre-tes&ng but uSerly failed to drive sales? IPA data shows
quan&ta&vely pre-tested ads don’t perform any beSer on the metrics that maSer –
like sales and profitability.
We’ve all been there. Numbers some&mes lie and humans are complicated.
But no ma1er how beguiling, confounding or perplexing it is, the ques;on
remains: What can we do as researchers to be1er understand behaviour?
“I think” doesn’t mean what you think it means
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Behavioural science kind of looks like
this when you close your eyes and
imagine it. Go ahead and try…
See?
It’s like a weird 4-dimensional cube
from the 1970s.
Amongst the marketer’s toolbox are many different types of tools. Some
are simple like a hammer, others are more complex, like a proton injector.
Somewhere in between is the discipline of behavioural science.
Most of us are familiar with the role our subconscious plays in decision
making – and understanding behavioural science can help you hone in on
the mechanics of why someone chooses to do the things they do.
There is a reason why the best adver&sing doesn’t need to talk about
product benefits. There’s a reason why we ‘forget’ bad news related to the
brands we like. And there’s a reason why we can make complicated
decisions in a maSer of microseconds.
A beSer understanding of behavioural science can help us understand
those reasons.
Get familiar with behavioural science
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Ambiguity Effect
IKEA effect
Loss Aversion Optimism Bias
Curse of Knowledge
Belief Bias
Declinism
The tendency to be over-optimistic,
overestimating favorable and pleasing
outcomes.
The disutility of giving up an object is
greater than the utility associated with
acquiring it.
The tendency to avoid options for
which missing information makes
the probability seem "unknown".
The tendency for people to place a
disproportionately high value on objects
that they partially assembled themselves,
such as furniture from IKEA, regardless of
the quality of the end result.
When better-informed people Dind it
extremely difDicult to think about
problems from the perspective of
lesser-informed people
The belief that a society or institution
is tending towards decline. Particularly,
it is the predisposition to view the past
favourably and future negatively.
An effect where someone's evaluation
of the logical strength of an argument is
biased by the believability of the
conclusion.
Availability Cascade
A self-reinforcing process in which a
collective belief gains more and more
plausibility through its increasing
repetition in public discourse
Frequency Illusion
The illusion in which a word, a name,
or other thing that has recently come to
one's attention suddenly seems to
appear with improbable frequency
shortly afterwards
Not Invented Here
Aversion to contact with or use of
products, research, standards, or
knowledge developed outside a group.
Pessimism Bias
The tendency for some people, especially
those suffering from depression, to
overestimate the likelihood of negative
things happening to them.
But never mind all that.
Behavioural science has identified over
170 cognitive biases that influence our
decision-making. Here are 11 of them.
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Go for the gut.
The central principle to this seemingly
complex discipline is actually quite simple
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Gut feelings are heuris&c shortcuts; paSerns of intui&ve intelligence derived from the en&rety of
one’s learned experience. They override thoughts to help us make really complicated decisions,
really quickly, all the &me. But how do you know when a decision comes from the gut or the
brain? Here’s three ques&ons that can help you understand the nature of of any given decision:
What is a gut feeling?
A Is the decision a habit?
Did the person simplify the decision?
Is context influencing the decision?
B
C
Deciding to eat a Frank & Cheese
burger will give you the wrong kind of
gut feeling.
If the answers are: A. No B. No and C. No … congratula&ons!* You’ve iden&fied an
instance of purely ra&onal behaviour and logic-based decision making. There’s no
need for behavioural science here. Feel free to take a short break before reading on.
But if the answers to any of the ques&ons suggest that they are using their gut
rather than their brain, no break for you.
*Although you might want to double check your answers. Unless you’re researching cartography or how people solve maths problems there’s likely something you’ve overlooked.
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“Habits emerge because the brain is
constantly looking for ways to save effort.”
- Charles Duhigg
Author of The Power of Habit:
Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business
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We all have habits. Some good, some bad. Some weird, some normal.
Some are even weird and normal, like mouthing Wed-nes-day phone&cally
to help you spell it out. (It’s ok, we all do it.)
Habits are efficient. They mean we can do complicated things, like driving
a 4,000 lb vehicle for hours on end, and simple things, like buying a box of
cereal, all without having to actually think about what we’re doing.
Ul&mately, this mental efficiency allows us to breeze through the 35,000
or so decisions it takes to get through an average day without breaking
down from mental exhaus&on. Because they aren’t decisions at all, but
forms of automa&c behaviour. And as any nail-biter, room-pacer or
smartphone-flicker can aSest, it takes far more energy to not do them
than it does to keep coas&ng on auto-pilot.
So, most of our behaviour is automa&c. Which means conscious thought
doesn’t have a role to play in the majority of our decisions. This is great
for brands if they are already a part of an exis&ng habit, but a real
challenge if they aren’t.
This is the habit fairy.
He lives inside your brain.
What is a habit?A
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By understanding how habits work we can design more intui&ve products
and crag smarter marke&ng that has a beSer chance changing people’s
behaviour.
Charles Duhigg’s habit loop provides a framework that lets us look under the
hood of these decisions to understand what it is that makes people do what
they do.
The habit loop consists of three parts:
Cue: No cue, no behaviour. All habits are triggered by something - it can be a
thought, feeling, image or even a &me of day. But all habits begin
somewhere. That somewhere is the cue.
Rou;ne: This is the behaviour itself, making this quicker, simpler or more fun
helps it to become s&cky.
Reward: The reward tells us that the behaviour was a good one we should
remember, and over &me ‘locks in’ the habit. You know it’s a habit when the
cue immediately creates an&cipa&on for the reward.
Cue
Routine
Reward
1. Charles Duhigg,The Power of Habit, 2013
1
The habit loop
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We’ve personally witnessed the importance of the the habit loop when we
work with clients who want to create a specific new behaviour amongst their
target customers. They will ogen find that people like their brand and believe in
it, but that this affec&on and belief isn’t transla&ng into posi&ve behaviours.
Which is frustra4ng.
Habits are by nature repe&&ve, so we believe the best way to study them is
through diary tasks – which help us iden&fy what triggers a behaviour and how
it makes people feel. We then use this as a basis for discussion, to understand
how each stage of the habit works.
This allows us to pinpoint which part of the habit needs to be addressed. We
might iden&fy that people don’t even think of using a given product, which is a
cue issue, or it didn’t live up to expecta&ons, which would be reward problem.
We used this model to help one client re-orient their communica&ons. Whilst
they had been hammering home the incredible performance of their product –
we discovered that they inadvertently created a cue for use only in extreme
situa&ons. Oops! This meant that their customers didn’t even think of using the
product except as a last resort …which wasn’t very ogen.
Using the habit loop
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Febreeze redesigned their boSle from
something plain and cupboard-bound,
into something aSrac&ve and counter-
worthy, taking it from being largely
ignored to something that was always
present as a visible cue.
Toyota’s glass of water app challenged
drivers to drive smoothly and avoid
abrupt accelera&on – this increased
awareness of fuel-efficiency and reduced
petrol consump&on by up to 10% for
users. Gamifica&on like this is a common
way to create a new reward for a desired
behaviour.
Starbucks knows how deeply their
customers both cherish and rely on their
morning coffee rou&ne, so they made
the process easier and s&ckier by
introducing the Starbucks app, which
allows customers to pre-purchase that
crucial first cup of joe and go straight to
the pick-up line.
Cue Routine Reward
A few of our favourite habit-y products
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What is it that prompts people to use
your product?
How intui&vely is your brand / product
associated with the problem it solves?
Is there an obvious moment people
should use your product?
How does the habit make people feel?
Is the reward instant or delayed?
How do you communicate the reward?
How easy, fun or quick is the behaviour?
Can the behaviour be streamlined?
Is the behaviour intui&vely learned?
Cue Routine Reward
What do habits mean for you?
First of all - acknowledge that you’re dealing with a habit rather than a ra&onal
choice. It’s hard to persuade people out of a habit, it’s far beSer to make the habit
easier and s&ckier. Here are some ques&ons to help you on your way:
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“When faced with a difficult question,
we often answer an easier one instead.”
- Daniel Kahneman
Nobel Prize-winning psychologist and author of
Thinking, Fast and Slow
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We guess&mate that people spend .05% of a moment considering and weighing the
benefits of 99% of the things we buy everyday.
Conversely, marketers spend 99% of our &me imagining the non-existent conversa&ons
people are having in their minds determining if 10% shinier hair is beSer than 15%
stronger strands.
They don’t weigh up pros and cons of all the op&ons available before making a
judgement or a decision. Instead they use intui&on and emo&on to guide them,
subs;tu;ng hard ques;ons that require concentra&on, for easier ques;ons that don’t.
Which is the most powerful
cleaning product?
Which brand feels
the most macho?
Should I increase my daily
fibre consump&on?
How ‘regular’ am I?
How likely am I to be squashed
by an intergalac&c meteor strike?
How do we blow
up a meteor?
Keep it simpleB
This metaphorical representation of
the human mind lends a certain
academic credibility to this insight,
don’t you think?
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Our infinite cleverness is ogen misdirected
towards wri&ng smart benefit statements
and compelling RTBs instead of simply
sor&ng out the easy ques&on that people
want answered.
This is a really libera;ng idea once you dig
into it. It means that our recommenda&ons
aren’t constrained to what people say is
important but to what they genuinely find
important. It directs our ques&oning and
analysis to help us get to the ogen simple
ques&ons without crea&ng complicated and
unnecessary hierarchies of decision making.
Ager all, no one has the &me or inclina&on
to think like that anyways.
Google faced concerns about the
safety of their self-driving cars, so
instead of answering ‘how safe are
these cars?’ they instead answer ‘how
friendly do the cars feel?’ by designing
them to look as cheerful as possible.
Honda wasn't considered a premium car
manufacturer, so instead of persuading
people with an answer to ‘how credible
is Honda?’ they created the now famous
“The Cog” advert that showed an Accord
being seamlessly manufactured by a
Rube Goldberg machine to answer the
ques&on ‘how clever is Honda?’.
Better Marketing answers the easy questions
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“People are typically unaware of the
reasons why they are doing what they
are doing, but when asked for a reason,
they readily supply one.”
- Daniel Gilbert
Psychologist at Harvard University and author of
Handbook of Social Psychology
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Environment – Where we are and what’s happening around
us influences how we feel and how we behave in the moment.
Social – We are social creatures at heart and tend to copy other
people – some&mes unconsciously.
Choice – The way a choice is presented to us influences our
judgements. In some markets choice overload prevents people
from making a choice at all, or choices with a short-term
benefits outweigh a greater long-term benefit.
Personal – How we feel when making the choice influences what
we will do, this ogen differs from how people feel when
conduc&ng research.
Recognising the importance of context provides lots of useful angles to understand behaviour and
inform beSer marke&ng. Everything we sense and interact with can influence our behaviour and
impact our decision-making. So too can the other people around us, and the social dynamics at play.
Context mattersC
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The Tube
Some London Underground sta&ons play
classical music to discourage an&social
behaviour, while some wine shops also play
classical music as it encourages people to spend
more.
Headphones
iPods were an extremely popular product, but you may
not have no&ced them if they didn’t include their
trademark white headphone cables. The headphones
served as an immediately recognizable cue, further
fuelling the perceived popularity of the device.
SocialEnvironment
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Coupons
JC Penney was known for having great discounts vouchers
that made people feel like smart and savvy shoppers. In 2011,
the CEO decided to replace this strategy with an ‘everyday
low prices’ approach. Sales plummeted. They had removed
the very thing that made JC Penney a fun and rewarding
place to shop, now it was boring and cheap rather than
exci&ng and cheap. The CEO leg soon ager and the voucher
deals were reintroduced.
Personal Choice
Scarcity
Chicago’s Doughnut Vault makes some amazing donuts. But
they don’t make that many of them, and when they run out
they close up shop for the day. This ‘scarcity effect’ makes
the donuts seem even more special, so they can charge
more, sell more AND go home early. Framing choice with
this method naturally influences our percep&on of
something’s worth.
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Context: Pub
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A
B
C
D
E
A
B
C
D E
Market research is ogen conducted in an alien
seIng – a place that is nothing like the place where
people make their decisions. To get closer to the
these decisive moments, The Sound regularly
conducts in situ research for our clients. Some&mes*
this happens in a pub.
Does nau&cal bric-a-brac provide a cue to drink rum
or other sailor-friendly spirits?
What mental shortcuts do they use when surveying
their choices?
How are they feeling in this exact moment?
Who is this guy and why is he staring at us? Seriously.
What in this context is considered socially ‘normal’?
*well, more than some&mes to be honest
FF Do they use a coaster, and if not, why?
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Summary of key points
“I think” ≠ what people think Tap into the gut Keep it simple
Diary Tasks
Context has a huge impact on how
we feel and behave in the moment.
Context mattersThe Habit Loop
We feel first and think second. If
we can get the gut to lead, the
brain will follow.
95% of our behaviours are habits
and they all follow a predictable
structure.
Let people tell their story in the
moment so you can discover their
triggers.
People do not know why they
do stuff.
Simplicity leads to fun,
quickness and s&ckiness.
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It starts with the brief. Be really clear on the behaviour you want to influence and
understand how all your marke&ng and research lines up behind that goal.
The brief is where we ogen find the tensions in our projects, where the strategy is at odds
with the specific behaviour that needs to change.
We work with you to plug that gap, to ensure your marke&ng sets out to accomplish the
behaviour change goals it is supposed to.
Ask be1er ques;ons. Use the models in this presenta&on to create beSer project
hypotheses and don’t assume anyone will be able to tell you the answer – many &mes
you have to observe or infer it.
Answer be1er ques;ons. We know that people don’t make ra&onal judgements, so
instead discover how they make non-ra&onal judgements and design for those instead.
During research be conscious of the methodology – how natural is the seIng? Look
outside of the ‘respondent’ – what else could be influencing behaviour?
Ok, so there’s lots of clever stuff –
now what do you do with it all?
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“Genuine insight values every
understanding, so always
contemplate and listen loudly.”
- The Sound
Smart as f*ck and never boring
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